Starting to Work From Home? Here’s How to Set Up Your Home Office

If you’re about to start working from your home, you definitely need to create your own home office. This will be your base for all the work that needs to be done on a day to day basis. Simply working at your dining room table with a laptop is not the answer and it won’t produce the right results for your career.

There are plenty of things you should know about before setting up your home office. It’s not as simple as you might assume at first. If you cut corners or make mistakes, it could affect your working life massively going forward. So read on to find out how you can set up your office and make it just right for you.

Find Inspiration Online

Finding the right inspiration for your home office plans is really important. The one social media platform that you need to be making use of during this process is Pinterest. It will show you all kinds of creative and interesting home office designs. Sure, some of them are much more elaborate than most people need them to be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pick up ideas from here, there and everywhere. There are plenty of websites that will tell you about cheap home office hacks too.

Choose Comfortable and Ergonomic Furniture

The office furniture that you choose for your home office will need to be both comfortable and ergonomic if you want it to serve you well for years to come. Sitting in a chair for a long time each day can lead to back problems if you’re not sitting on an ergonomic chair. The most important aspect of this is the back support that your chair offers. Many people working from home forget the importance of good furniture because they’re used to it just being there in the office. But buying your own means having to consider all this.

Ensure You Have a Source of Natural Light

Never underestimate the power of natural light when you’re setting up your brand new home office. That feeling you get when you’re shut away in a dark and dingy home office for the whole day can be really depressing. You don’t want to feel like you’re entirely shut off from the rest of the world. Having a bit of natural light coming into the room from a window will keep your mood more positive and prevent you from feeling too locked in, which can be a problem for many people working at home.

Make Sure it’s Private and Free of Distractions

The last thing you want when you’re trying to get work done is people interrupting you and distracting you. So make sure that your office is properly shut off from the rest of the home so that you don’t get distracted from your work every few minutes. Privacy is a big deal and it can be hard to find when you’re working from a home where other people are also living. It’s up to you to find a way around this.

Find Creative Storage Solutions

Storage is one issue many people struggle with in their home office, and in a way, it’s not hard to see why. Home offices tend to be pretty small, and that means that getting all the things you need to store into your home office can be tricky. Adding high wall shelves is one of the tricks that is really helpful because you can then put storage boxes high up there and out of the way. That’s something that you should take inspiration from and keep looking for creative storage solutions.

Organise Your Wires and Cables

Cable management is something you need to be on top of before day one. If you allow your wires and cables to get tangled and messy below and behind your desk, you will regret it when it comes to moving things around or taking an appliance out. Luckily for you, there are so many cable management tools and products out there on the market right now, so make use of them. They’re so simple to use and they make such a big difference.

Add Multiple Work Zones

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have various working zones in your home office. Maybe you need a small area for printing and scanning and another area for your regular computer work. It’s up to you how you organise these different functions of course, but be sure not to put everything in one area if you have a whole room at your disposal. Everyone’s work is different so only you can decide which working zones you need in your home office.

Personalise the Working Area

One thing that you can’t always do very much when you’re working in a corporate office is personalise your working area. It’s important to make sure that you make that break and add some personal touches to the area in which you’re working. It makes the atmosphere in your home office more positive and applicable to you. That’s a big deal because home working is different from working in a regular office, and there’s nothing wrong with emphasising those differences.

Don’t Allow Clutter to Accumulate

Clutter can quickly get on top of you and bog down your home office when you start working from home. There are plenty of pieces of paper and documents and files that need to be stored somewhere. But they certainly shouldn’t just end up stacked on your desk looking for a home. Once that clutter starts to accumulate, it’s very hard to tackle it and get it back under control. From day one, you should make sure that this problem doesn’t develop at all.

Working from home is rarely as fun and relaxed as it sounds, but with the right planning and implementation, you can create a workable office in your home. This will help you stay focused and fulfill your career potential each and every day of the working weak. So get to work on this right away.